Child Support in Action

(Hardback)

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Description

This study of the Child Support Agency (CSA) compares the accounts of former husbands and wives with those of their respective legal advisers, and incorporates the experience and views of the CSA staff, who attempted to calculate and enforce child maintenance obligations in the same cases. The media picture of misery visited upon "absent fathers" is borne out in part, but the book also describes a catastrophic administrative failure which led to the abandonment of many of the basic tenets of administrative justice. The reasons for this do not lie in the perceived unfairness of the formula, but rather in the failure of those drafting the Child Support legislation to appreciate the impact of such change upon the rest of our hugely complex benefit structure, and their failure to grasp that the problems of inadequate disclosure and ineffective enforcement could not be tackled effectively by a distant bureaucracy.

Reviews

[an] in-depth and well-rounded study. Where the book adds to our knowledge derives from the legal and quasi-legal questions which the research addressed and from its almost unique insights inside the company. -- Professor Gary Craig * Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law *
This book should become, if it is not already, required reading for all those engaged in attempting to rectify the failings of the current systema delight to readthe findings will command wide respect and support. -- Gillian Douglas * Journal of Social Security Law *

Author Bio

Gwynn Davis is Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Bristol. Nick Wikeley is Professor of Law at the University of Southampton. Richard Young is Professor of Law and Policy at the University of Bristol.